A Curse on Dostoevsky Read online

  Praise for Atiq Rahimi

  A Curse on Dostoevsky:

  “Atiq Rahimi brilliantly reimagines Crime and Punishment and, in a daring feat of creative panache, transplants Dostoevsky’s classic morality tale to modern-day Afghanistan. This is easily Rahimi’s most imaginative and complex work yet, and should cement his reputation as a writer of great and unique vision.”

  —Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

  “This book … breathes the very dust of Kabul, the geography, both personal and political, of its alleys and districts. Welcome to Kabul, [a place] with faith but without laws.”

  —Livres Hebdo

  “This is more a novel to chew over than gobble down.”

  —Anthony Cummins, Sunday Telegraph

  “Here, Atiq Rahimi sings an incandescent, raging story, which dissects, in a highly sensitive way, the chaos of his homeland and the contradictions of his people.”

  —L’Express

  “ ‘If we all decided, today, on the example of this young man, to put our own activities on trial, we could conquer the fratricidal chaos that is currently reigning in our country.’ This is the function of remorse even in a land in turmoil. It is not a luxury. A Curse on Dostoevsky is a gift to literature.”

  —Le Figaro

  “In the light of the Russian writer, [Rahimi] describes his country so that we may understand it like we never have before. His latest novel isn’t only breathless, beautiful, and strong, it is indispensable … He dared—and succeeded.”

  —Le Point

  “Most certainly his most ambitious work yet.”

  —Libre Belgique

  “Wide and bewitching, rich in numerous psychological and metaphysical devices … Atiq Rahimi may have achieved his best work in the French language.”

  —La Croix

  The Patience Stone:

  “[The Patience Stone] is a deceptively simple book, written in a spare, poetic style. But it is a rich read, part allegory, part a tale of retribution, part an exploration of honor, love, sex, marriage, war. It is without doubt an important and courageous book.”

  —From the introduction by Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

  “The Patience Stone is perfectly written: spare, close to the bone, sometimes bloody, with a constant echo, like a single mistake that repeats itself over and over and over.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Powerful … an expansive work of literature.”

  —New York Post

  “In this remarkable book Atiq Rahimi explores ways through which personal and political oppression can be resisted through acts of self-revelation. He reveals to us the violence we are capable of imposing upon ourselves and others in our personal as well as political and social relations. In his stark and compact style, Rahimi recreates for us the texture of such violence, its almost intimate brutality as well as its fragility. Although the story happens within the context of a particular time and place, the emotions it evokes and relationships it creates have universal implications and could happen to any of us under similar conditions. The Patience Stone is relevant to us exactly because, as Rahimi says, it takes place ‘Somewhere in Afghanistan or elsewhere.’ ”

  —Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Things I’ve Been Silent About

  “With a veiled face and stolen words, a woman keeps silent about her forbidden pain in an Afghanistan marred by men’s foolishness. But when she rediscovers her voice, she overcomes the chaos. Atiq Rahimi tells the story of this woman’s heartbreaking lamentation to awaken our consciences.”

  —Yasmina Khadra, author of The Swallows of Kabul

  “[A] clever novel … readers get a glimpse of daily life in a country terrorized by conflict and religious fundamentalism. Rahimi paints this picture with nuance and subtlety … [His] sparse prose complements his simple yet powerful storytelling prowess. This unique story is both enthralling and disturbing.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Rahimi’s lyric prose is simple and poetic, and McLean’s translation is superb. With an introduction by Khaled Hosseini, this Prix Goncourt–winning book should have a profound impact on the literature of Afghanistan for its brave portrayal of, among other things, an Afghan woman as a sexual being.”

  —Library Journal

  “A slender, devastating exploration of one woman’s tormented inner life, which won the 2008 Prix Goncourt … The novel, asserts [Khaled] Hosseini in his glowing introduction, finally gives a complex, nuanced, and savage voice to the grievances of millions.”

  —Words Without Borders

  A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear:

  “The language has the rhythm of a Sufi prayer; the novel offers an insight into the deepest fears of the people of Afghanistan.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “That sense of losing one’s identity, of being subsumed by a greater, if illogical, power, is a key theme in Atiq Rahimi’s taut, layered novel … A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear is the intimate narrative … of an entire desperate, anguished country.”

  —Washington Post

  “An intensely intimate portrait of a man (and by extension his country) questioning reality and the limits of the possible … full of elegant evocations … A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear resonates deeply because, no doubt, Rahimi has written a true and sad account, but the story could easily be that of any other Afghan, of any other denizen of this modern, anarchic state. In the end, we are left to wonder whether Rahimi has presented us with a story, a dream, or a nightmare, though it is likely all three.”

  —Words Without Borders

  “Rahimi’s tale of confused nationality, indiscriminate punishment, desperate survival, and no clear way to safety depicts decades-old events, but it feels especially poignant amid the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan that’s spanned the greater part of the past decade.”

  —Flavorwire

  “An original and utterly personal account of the pressures a totalitarian society exerts on the individual in 1979 Afghanistan, before the Soviet invasion … A flawless translation does justice to Rahimi’s taut, highly calibrated prose.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “In prose that is spare and incisive, poetic and searing, prize-winning Afghani author Rahimi, who fled his native land in 1984, captures the distress of his people.”

  —Booklist, starred review

  “Rahimi is an author known for his unflinching examination of his home country as much as the experimental styles in which he writes … A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear takes risks in its structure … But Rahimi’s carefully controlled new novel exploits these uncertainties, joining the past to the present and legend with fact, creating an appropriately surreal narrative, one that rings through with truth.”

  —ForeWord Magazine

  “A taut and brilliant burst of anguished prose … both a wonderful and a dreadful little book.”

  —The Guardian

  “A beautiful piece of writing.”

  —Ruth Pavey, The Independent

  “Short but powerful … The beauty of the language lends this work a haunting clarity.”

  —The Herald

  “The novella is verbal photography … [it] seems the real thing … seamlessly translated.”

  —Russell Celyn Jones, London Times

  Earth and Ashes:

  “Anyone seeking to understand why Afghanistan is difficult and what decades of violence have done to its people should read Atiq Rahimi. He is a superb guide to a hard and complex land.”

  —Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan

  “The blasted dreamscape of Rahimi’s sto
ry and his tightly controlled prose make this a sobering literary testament to the horrors of war.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “It has the feel of a book of great antiquity and authority; you could more readily level the Afghan mountains than damage the dreaming culture that Earth and Ashes both embodies and silently trusts.”

  —London Times

  “With this novel Rahimi picks up a shard of broken glass and sees the whole truth of his devastated country.”

  —Der Spiegel

  ALSO BY ATIQ RAHIMI

  Novels

  Earth and Ashes

  A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

  The Patience Stone

  Compilations

  Three by Atiq Rahimi

  Copyright © P.O.L éditeur 2011

  First published in France as Maudit soit Dostoïevski in 2011

  Translation copyright © Polly McLean 2013

  First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus, London,

  in 2013

  Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016.

  Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Rahimi, Atiq.

  [Maudit soit Dostoïevski. English]

  A curse on Dostoevsky / Atiq Rahimi; translated from the French by Polly McLean.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-59051-547-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-59051-548-8 (e-book) 1. Afghanistan—Fiction.

  2. Psychological fiction. I. McLean, Polly. II. Title.

  PQ3979.3.R34M3813 2014

  891’.563—dc23

  2013042495

  Publisher’s Note:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  Oh to have committed the sin of Adam!

  HAFIZ AZISH, Poétique de la terre

  But life, like writing, is nothing more than the repetition of a sentence stolen from another.

  FRÉDÉRIC BOYER, Techniques de l’amour

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  First Page

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  THE MOMENT Rassoul lifts the ax to bring it down on the old woman’s head, the thought of Crime and Punishment flashes into his mind. It strikes him to the very core. His arms shake; his legs tremble. And the ax slips from his hands. It splits open the old woman’s head, and sinks into her skull. She collapses without a sound on the red and black rug. Her apple-blossom-patterned headscarf floats in the air, before landing on her large, flabby body. She convulses. Another breath; perhaps two. Her staring eyes fix on Rassoul standing in the middle of the room, not breathing, whiter than a corpse. His patou falls from his bony shoulders. His terrified gaze is lost in the pool of blood, blood that streams from the old woman’s skull, merges with the red of the rug, obscuring its black pattern, then trickles toward the woman’s fleshy hand, which still grips a wad of notes. The money will be bloodstained.

  Move, Rassoul, move!

  Total inertia.

  Rassoul?

  What’s the matter with him? What is he thinking about?

  Crime and Punishment. That’s right—Raskolnikov, and what became of him.

  But didn’t he think of that before, when he was planning the crime?

  Apparently not.

  Or perhaps that story, buried deep within, incited him to the murder.

  Or perhaps …

  Or perhaps … what? Is this really the time to ruminate? Now that he’s killed the old woman, he must take her money and jewels, and run.

  Run!

  He doesn’t move. Just stands there. Rooted to the spot, like a tree. A dead tree, planted in the flagstones of the house. Still staring at the trickle of blood that has almost reached the woman’s hand. Forget the money! Leave this house, right now, before the woman’s sister arrives!

  Sister? This woman doesn’t have a sister. She has a daughter.

  Who cares? What difference if it’s a sister or a daughter? Right now Rassoul will be forced to kill anyone who enters the house.

  The blood veers off just before it reaches the woman’s hand. It flows toward a worn, darned part of the rug and pools not far from a small wooden box overflowing with chains, necklaces, gold bracelets, watches …

  What’s the point of all these details? Just take the box and the money!

  He crouches. His fingers move hesitantly toward the woman’s hand, to grab the cash. Her grip is hard and firm, as if she were still alive and keeping a tight hold on the wad of notes. He pulls. In vain. He looks anxiously at the woman’s lifeless eyes and sees his face reflected in them. The bulging eyes remind him that a victim’s last sight of her assassin remains fixed in her pupils. He is flooded with fear. He steps back. His reflection in the old woman’s eyes slowly disappears behind her eyelids.

  “Nana Alia?” calls a woman’s voice. It’s happening, she’s here, the one who wasn’t meant to come. You’re done for now, Rassoul!

  “Nana Alia?” Who is it? Her daughter. No, it isn’t a young voice. Never mind. No one must enter this room. “Nana Alia!” The voice approaches, “Nana Alia?”, climbs the stairs.

  Leave, Rassoul!

  He takes off like a wisp of straw, flying to the window, opening it and leaping onto the roof of the house next door, abandoning his patou, the money, the jewels, the ax … all of it.

  Reaching the edge of the roof, he hesitates to jump down into the lane. But an alarming cry from Nana Alia’s room makes everything shake—his legs, the roof, the mountains—so he jumps, and lands hard. A sharp pain shoots through his ankle. It doesn’t matter. He must stand. The lane is empty. He has to get out of here.

  He runs.

  Runs not knowing where he’s going.

  He only stops at a dead end, beside a pile of rubbish, the stink burning his nostrils. But he is no longer aware of anything. Or doesn’t care. He stays. Standing, leaning against a wall. He can still hear the woman’s piercing cry; he doesn’t know whether she is actually screaming or he is being haunted by her cry. He holds his breath. All at once the lane, or his mind, empties of the sound. He pushes himself off the wall to move on, but the pain in his ankle stops him dead. He grimaces in pain, leans back against the wall, squats down to massage his foot. But something inside him starts rising. Suddenly nauseous, he bends over to vomit yellowish liquid. The filthy dead end spins around him. He puts his head in his hands and sinks to the ground, back to the wall.

  He is still for a long moment, eyes closed, not breathing, as if listening for a cry or a moan from Nana Alia’s house. Nothing but the beating of his own blood in his temples.

  Perhaps the woman fainted when she saw the corpse.

  He hopes not.

  Who was that woman, the blasted creature who messed it all up?

  Was it really her or … Dostoevsky?

  Dostoevsky, yes, it was him! He floored me, destroyed me with his Crime and Punishment. Stopped me from following in the steps of his hero, Raskolnikov: killing a second woman, this one innocent; taking the money and the jewels that would remind me of my crime; becoming prey to my remorse, sinking into an abyss of guilt, ending up sentenced to hard labor …

  And? At least that would be bette
r than running off like an idiot, a pathetic excuse for a murderer. Blood on my hands, but nothing in my pockets.

  What madness!

  A curse on Dostoevsky!

  His febrile hands close around his face, lose themselves in his frizzy hair, then clasp together again behind his sweat-soaked neck. He is seized by a terrible thought: What if the woman wasn’t Nana Alia’s daughter? She might take everything and leave as quietly as she came. But what about me? My mother, my sister Donia, my fiancée Sophia—what will become of them? I committed this murder for them. That woman has no right to the loot. I have to go back there. Screw my ankle!

  He stands up.

  Goes back the way he came.

  RETURN TO the scene of the crime? What a trap! Everyone knows it’s a fatal error. An error that has ruined many a competent criminal. Haven’t you heard that wise old saying: Money is like water: once it flows away, it never comes back? It’s all over. Never forget that a thief only has one chance at a job; if you mess it up, you’re fucked; any attempt to sort things out is bound to end in disaster.

  He stops, glancing around. Everything is calm and quiet.

  He rubs his ankle and sets off again. Unconvinced by the wise old saying. He walks fast, decisively, until he comes to a fork in the road. There he stops for a moment, just to catch his breath before taking the street leading to the scene of the crime.

  Let’s hope the woman really did faint next to the old lady’s corpse.

  Here he is, in the victim’s street. He slows down, surprised by the silence around the house. A dog is dozing in the shade of a wall. It sees him and stands up heavily to emit a lazy growl. Rassoul freezes. Wavers. Lets a little time pass in the reluctant hope that it will convince him of the folly of his curiosity. He’s about to leave when he hears footsteps hurrying through Nana Alia’s courtyard. Panicking, he flattens himself against the wall. A woman shrouded in a sky-blue chador exits the house and rushes away, leaving the gate open behind her. Is this the same woman? It must be. She has taken the money and the jewels, and is making her escape.